When life feels overwhelming – remember that everything that is behind you has at some point been in front of you!

Have you ever felt as if life sucks? As if the challenges you’re facing is coming at you at a speed that makes formula 1 races appear as a slow motion activity? As if your energy is reduced to the same level as the energy of a dead item and you don’t know how the f–k you going to get your life back on track?

I truly have! And a hell of a lot of the people I coach as well! And therefore I want to share a perspective that truly has helped me to manage life when it feels completely unmanageable!

When we’re faced with more than we feel we can manage, it creates an overwhelming feeling that cuts through our whole existence. It affects everything! With the best of intentions, friends, family, colleagues try to make our life a little bit better by coming up with great ideas about “fun activities”… What they don’t realize is that every suggestion is just a reminder that you’re so f—-g off! That the joy and energy that once was you is gone and you don’t know where to find it…

My life has always been a bit chaotic. There has never been a straight path and being an explorer by nature tends to feed the chaos. Since this has been my life, I’m used to living on a rollercoaster and manage chaos pretty good. When you’re used to both highs and lows they don’t become as scary as if your life is more straightforward. But there was a time in my life where I found myself fumbling in a chaos that I hadn’t experienced before. A chaos that was pitch black and my toolbox wasn’t by any means equipped for that. This was so complete, so overwhelming, so dark and hopeless. I had no idea how to get back on track. Me, who normally had all the answer, who helped everyone else to sort their heads out… And all this “me” wanted to do was to go to bed and wake up when it was all over…

But I didn’t go to bed! I got pissed off and decided to treat this is as nothing but another unexpected challenge and therefore nothing but a way to learn something new. I told myself that “Jenny, from now on you’re going to view the challenges in your life as if they all come because you need them and simply put: All the ones that you have behind you, have at some point been in front of you! So instead of getting completely overwhelmed realize that that’s just a feeling because sometimes we don’t get to catch our breath before it’s time for the next one to come our way. When you bring the challenges that you’ve already put behind you, and the challenges that is yet to come, into the present moment you’re fucked!”

And all of a sudden the complete darkness started to resolve itself! I realized that what I had done was bringing the past (which is EVERYTHING that we’ve already experienced…) and the future (which is EVERYTHING that is yet to come…) into the present (which is the ONLY MOMENT that actually exists…). And by doing so I created moment after moment that became completely overwhelming!

It wasn’t all the challenges per se, it was the fact that I blended them all together!

So when you’re caught in an overwhelming spiral of challenges, STOP for a while. Reflect on all the things that is already behind you, they were at some point in front of you. Every single challenge that is behind you means that you’re that many challenges closer to a solution!

Creating balance has a lot to do with how you deal with challenges! What sometimes makes me sad is that the vast majority of people are clinging on to the dream that “some day I’ll have balance in my life” and it’s as if they put their happiness on hold and accept that they won’t be completely happy until that day. And meanwhile LIFE goes on, the actual life, not the imagined!